Advertisement
This is member-exclusive content
icon/ui/info filled
Opinion

We need more than street signs to ‘Stop Asian Hate’ in Dallas

We need to learn more about the contributions of Asian Americans in North Texas.

On the morning of Jan. 22, which marked the beginning of Lunar New Year, the country awoke to breaking news that a mass shooting killed 11 people, injuring at least 10 others, in Monterey Park, Calif. Only a day later, another mass shooter killed seven people in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Both tragedies reopened wounds of past traumatic events for Asian Americans, who are all too familiar now with these stories of violence.

Last May, a shooting at Hair World Salon in Dallas’ Koreatown, which injured three Korean women, shook the city’s Asian American population. Some community members began arming themselves with more guns and attended town hall meetings with the Dallas Police Department. Dallas Police Chief Eddie García did not originally believe the attacks to be racially motivated. However, after learning the suspect reportedly suffered “panic attacks and delusions when he is around anyone of Asian descent,” Garcia stated, “Hate has no place here.”

His words echoed those of Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who, following the 2021 Atlanta-area shootings that killed eight people (six of whom were women of Asian descent), proclaimed March 26 as Stop Asian Hate Day. “Hate has no place in our city or our country,” Johnson said and encouraged people to use the hashtag #StopAsianHate on social media.

Advertisement

But the solutions for combating anti-Asian violence will not be found in more guns, increased policing, mayoral proclamations or hashtags. Even the long-awaited bilingual street signs in Koreatown are not enough. Stop AAPI Hate and the Edelman National Survey of Asian American and Pacific Islanders’ data confirmed that the most effective solution in addressing anti-AAPI hate is education.

Opinion

Get smart opinions on the topics North Texans care about.

Or with:

Last year, the Texas State Board of Education considered updating the state’s social studies curriculum standards to include Asian American history, including a stand-alone Asian American studies elective course. Unfortunately, the board delayed their update until at least 2025. Texas is already behind states such as Illinois that are requiring public schools to teach a unit of Asian American history. Dallas is perhaps trailing even further.

In his book White Metropolis, historian Michael Phillips aptly wrote that city leaders transformed Dallas into a “laboratory of forgetfulness.” Organizations such as Dallas Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation; Remembering Black Dallas; the Dallas Mexican American Historical League; and others are trying to fill in the gaps. The city’s new racial equity plan seeks to address the racism that shaped Dallas.

Advertisement

Still, the contributions (even existence) of Asian Americans are often forgotten or excluded in larger conversations about racial equity. To the same extent our history is overlooked, so are our needs. While the new street signs unveiled in Koreatown are an important symbol, without further investment, they risk becoming decorative. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing population in North Texas, but we don’t even have a city-operated cultural center, despite a master plan being developed for it back in 2011. Imagine having a space to celebrate festivities like Lunar New Year and offer educational programming for everyone to learn more about our stories.

Because widespread knowledge about our history is so limited, Asian Americans are often seen as perpetual foreigners or outsiders, becoming easy scapegoats during times of geopolitical turmoil. In June 2020, when Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as “kung flu” during a youth rally in Phoenix, the crowd cheered. Racist narratives like this fueled rising anti-Asian hate incidents, but they were not new.

In 1873, J.L. Chow was the first person of Asian descent listed in Dallas’ city directories. He opened a laundromat at 904 Elm St. and, by 1891, the majority of laundries in Dallas were Chinese-owned. An 1894 Dallas Daily Times Herald editorial with the headline “Danger in inferior laundries: Dallas customers cannot be too careful where they send their soiled clothing” said that employees of the “inferior Chinese laundries of this city run the risk of contracting some vile disease.”

Advertisement

We are doomed to repeat history if we have not learned from it. To “Stop Asian Hate” in Dallas (and beyond), we need education and tangible resources — all of which will require sustained advocacy from community members and city leaders. As the late activist Grace Lee Boggs said, “The only way to survive is by taking care of one another.” Street signs won’t save us, but community care could.

Stephanie Drenka is a co-founder of the Dallas Asian American Historical Society. She is a Korean adoptee and facilitator/coach for The OpEd Project. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.